Big--money literary prizes are great for several reasons beyond the obvious bottom--line benefit to being one of the lucky winners: they stir up fevered debate around the merits of selected works, they lend moments of glamour to what is usually a lonely pursuit and, perhaps most importantly, they inspire readers (including book critics) to pay greater attention to a previously overlooked book.
On June 1, judges Lisa Robertson, Eliot Weinberger and Lavinia Greenlaw awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, from the international shortlist, f
